Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Hello All,

We are moving to Orlando, Davenport area next year and i am looking for school help????

Which are the best schools in this area, travel time of 20-30mins from this area. I have a 14yr old, 5yr old and a 4yr old but i am going to keep him back a year maybe and he will attend school when he is 5.

Any recommendations for preschools?

Thank you kindly

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Davenport is 30 miles from Orlando - arguably an hour drive. So you want schools near Davenport, right? I can't help. Just narrowing it down for you!

PS welcome to BE!

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

For something as specific as schools in the Davenport area you will probably do better to try city-data.com

That said the general view seems to be that the word "best" doesn't usually apply to schools in Florida, and "least bad" seems more apt.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Unless you are planning to send your children to private school, they will attend the school that serves your street address. So choose the school you want, and work backwards by looking for properties within that catchment area.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Nothing wrong with Florida public schools, the better of which routinely send graduates the Ivy Leagues.

As Nutmegger said, US public schools have intake areas, and so if you identify a school, you have to live within that school's intake area for your child to attend there.

Looking it up it seems the local high school is Ridge Community High School with 2,500 students - so a medium-sized high school. Seems dual enrollment and AP is available there so if your child is academically talented it should be OK.

I really wouldn't bother with private secondary education in the US unless you had a specific interest in having your child get a religious education, or if they were world-class aspiring artists or something like that which required a highly specialised curriculum and instructional staff.

In the US, school quality closely tracks the neighbourhood's socio-economic status.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

I live just north of Davenport, although i don't have school age children i used to have a British neighbour (moved back home) that would drive their children further north to Montverde Acadamy. Its a fee paying school but apparently highly rated.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

There are a number of good reasons to consider private schools, but not everyone would agree with them. An obvious and not too controversial example would be that you remove the threat of "redistricting", a word which seems to cause heart palpitations in most homeowners even if they don't have children.

Once you have removed "school district" from consideration you are then freed up to consider housing that is very considerably cheaper than houses that are "in the right district", and never have to worry about redistricting. :)

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Also to remember that the Davenport Kissimmee area is taking in a huge number of displaced families from Puerto Rico whose children need to find local schools.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Wow - our local high school has around 500 students and is classed as medium-sized in Maine. The largest high school in Maine has fewer than 1,500 students.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

We used Primrose schools for pre-school, it seemed better than most and had the feel of a UK primary school. My one big complaint is that they force children to have a nap in the afternoon and I think this is quite common, our children stopped sleeping in the day from two years old so this was a step back. It wasn't cheap either, so having them nap for two hours was annoying!

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

I believe that is universally true for US pre-school/daycare, and when most people use ps/dc because both parents are working, having a child who has had a nap in the afternoon frees up time in the evening so the mother/parents can have some time with their child and not have to rush home to put their child to bed.

Our experience was that, while our daughter wasn't always napping much after her third birthday, she was rested and didn't need to go to bed until around 7-7.30pm, which gave us time to eat as a family, which wouldn't have been possible if she hadn't had a nap/"quiet time" in the afternoon.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

I like a nap in the afternoon.

Especially if I have had a beer or two.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Kids certainly seemed to stay up later than ours so it is part of the adjustment when moving, it was just a bit soul destroying for my son who was forced to sit on a mat in silence while the other kids slept!

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Bit late to this thread Jesshodge, sorry.

USNews high school rankings is a good place to look for good high schools in your area.
https://www.usnews.com/education/bes...chools/florida

Schools are assigned according to address so choose the school before you settle on the area or a particular house. Check with a realtor that your budget is sufficient for a house in a good school district - they will probably be more expensive andhave less choice.

Great schools also does a ranking but I am less keen on using this... it's the "yelp" for schools and doesn't use the same objective information as USnews. Generally, good high schools=good area= good elementary, good middle school.

Re: Moving to Orlando..... School Help Please!
 

Just watch out with the US News rankings - sometimes they miss extremely good schools out altogether.